A surge in illegal migration on the Balkan route to central Europe has become a hotly debated topic ahead of elections in Slovakia and Poland and prompted the reintroduction of border checks in the region.
Migrants have been crossing from Hungary into Slovakia in unprecedented numbers in recent months, a development some Slovak politicians have blamed on Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán seeking to boost a fellow anti-immigrant politician’s chances of returning to office.
Ahead of a tight parliamentary election on Saturday, Slovakia’s former premier Robert Fico and his Smer party are hoping to stage an unlikely comeback, in part by highlighting the recent surge in illegal migration.
“Outrageous and unacceptable!” Fico said earlier this month. “If the [police] required documents from real war refugees from Ukraine . . . we see no point in thinking differently for economic migrants.”
Fico has promised to reinstate border controls with Hungary if he is elected, five years after being forced to resign amid mass street protests over the killing of an investigative journalist, who was probing alleged government corruption, and his fiancée.
Slovakia and Hungary are both part of the border-free Schengen area, so the frontier between them is largely unguarded. But the recent spike in illegal crossings is notable, with Slovak authorities saying such arrivals, which totalled just over 10,000 in 2022, have approached 25,000 so far this year.
Critics claim Orbán has intentionally allowed migrants who entered Hungary from outside the EU to continue on to Slovakia in order to benefit Fico, who also shares the Hungarian leader’s Russia-friendly stance.
“If the Hungarian governing party had decided to help Robert Fico . . . before the September parliamentary elections, it would not behave differently,” László Sólymos, a Slovak politician from the Hungarian minority’s Bridge party, wrote in a Facebook post. “The number of migrants coming across the southern border is increasing mainly due to the inaction of the Hungarian police.”
Orbán has championed a tough line on immigration since the migration crisis of 2015, when hundreds of thousands crossed his country on their way to Germany and elsewhere in the EU. His government built a double razor wire fence along the Serb frontier, pushed people back across the border and forced migrants to seek asylum elsewhere, defying European Court of Justice rulings.
Hungarian police have recorded an increase in migratory pressure this year, saying they had held up or pushed back four times as many migrants each week in the past month than in the first few weeks of the year.
On the ground, migrants crossing into Slovakia reported how differently they had been treated on their way into Hungary compared with the way out.
On Tuesday morning, 18 migrants crossed a rickety wooden bridge over the river Ipel’ at the border between Slovakia and Hungary, saying they had left Syria over a month ago and were headed to Germany.
“We have crossed Turkey, Bulgaria, Serbia,” said one migrant, who called himself Ahmed. “The Hungarians chased us at the border with Serbia and beat us when they could find us. But this crossing was easy.”
Once on the Slovak side, they were met by police and put on a bus to the city of Veľký Krtíš to be registered and released — a practice Slovakia has followed for years but which has become one of Fico’s favourite campaign topics.
Fico wrote on Facebook earlier this month that authorities should “not give [illegal migrants] papers that legalise their stay in the EU”.
His Smer party and the liberal Progressive Slovakia party are the frontrunners in the latest polls and are tied with about 20 per cent of voting intentions each. Either would need coalition partners to govern.
The border tensions between Slovakia and Hungary come as Germany on Wednesday introduced temporary checks at its borders with the Czech Republic and Poland. Poland has taken similar steps at its border with Slovakia.
Last weekend, German chancellor Olaf Scholz accused Poland of “waving through” illegal migrants. The Polish government in return accused Scholz of using migration to meddle in Poland’s campaign ahead of elections on October 15.
In Germany illegal migration is a prominent topic for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which is now polling at nearly 22 per cent — ahead of all three parties in Scholz’s coalition. Germany is holding important regional elections in Bavaria and Hesse in coming weeks, and three more next year in eastern states where the AfD has its stronghold.
The AfD has put the spotlight on a spike in illegal migration via central European countries that many incomers seek to transit on their way to Germany and further west.
“We should have done something earlier to stop the movement of illegal migrants because it was not going to be accepted at some point by the Germans,” said former Polish foreign minister Jacek Czaputowicz.
Hungarian authorities in recent months released more than 1,000 jailed human traffickers, a move condemned by Brussels, which launched legal proceedings against Budapest.
Slovakia’s caretaker premier Ľudovít Ódor defended Slovakia’s anti-migration measures, including sending 500 extra troops to the border with Hungary. He said the migrants presented no threat as nearly all wanted to travel on to other countries.
“Some politicians care not to find a solution but something to scare voters with,” Ódor told the FT. “They want to find enemies, and the migrants come in handy for them.”
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